(Credit: Opéra de Toulon official website)

Opéra de Toulon has announced the cancellation of Johann Strauss’ popular operetta “Die Fledermaus” scheduled for Dec. 29 & 31, 2021.

General and Artistic Director of the Opéra de Toulon Claude-Henri Bonnet has informed the public that the performances were canceled due to a large number of COVID-19 cases in the production team.

The operetta was set to star Eleonore Marguerre as Rosalinde, Stephan Genz as Gabriel von Eisenstein, Horst Lamnek as Frank, Veronika Seghers as Ida, Claire de Sevigné as Adèle, Tamara Gura as Prince Orlofsky, François Piolino as Dr. Blind, Miloš Bulajić as Alfred, and Thomas Tatzl as Dr. Falk. Yoel Gamzou was set to conduct a production by Jean Lacornerie.

The opera house will next present Puccini’s “La bohème” in January and February 2022.

France is undergoing a massive COVID-19 wave driven by the Delta and Omicron variants. The country has logged 179,807 virus infections in a single day for the first time in the pandemic and COVID-19 hospitalizations have doubled over the past month. More than one in 100 people in the Paris region have tested positive in the past week, according to the regional health service.

The French government is expected to convene and announce new measures in order to stop the super-exponential spread of the Omicron variant.